CNN: “No sale” says AT&T
August 8, 2017
By Chris Forrester
AT&T’s Entertainment boss John Stankey says that CNN will not be sold once AT&T wraps its purchase of Time-Warner, which owns CNN and the other Turner Broadcasting assets.
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, he denied previous reports that CNN would be sold after the $85 million purchase, saying that News was on a par with Live Sports in terms of urgency and watchability. “It would be a strategically missed opportunity if we weren’t in that [News] business,” he said.
He stressed that AT&T was acquiring a collection of assets and had “no intention to divest any of that or restructure it, unequivocally, bar none,” Stankey told the trade journal.
But one thing will go, and that’s the Time Warner name. Stankey did not say what the new name would be but said the entertainment assets would no longer be known as Time Warner.